It turned into quite a busy week last week so didn't get to spend as much time as I was hoping in my studio. Hopefully things will be a little bit calmer this week. I did get a few beads made to add to my stock for the bead fair and I also managed to finish a project I started a couple of weeks back but hadn't got around to completing. It's a Christmas bowl (24.5 cm wide and 6 cm deep) and I'm really quite pleased with how it turned out. So much so that I might even put it up for sale in the shop.

What doesn't show up very well in the photos is that the green is aventurine green and therefore has a lovely sparkle to it. I also added some dichroic glass to one of the flowers and all the flowers have dichroic glass centres.

Well we've had some pretty wet weather here over the last few days. The poor dog has hardly had a decent walk and the garden is too soggy to spend much time in. It does mean more time for bead making though!

Four weeks today until the bead fair. It will be my first and a very new experience. It's exciting but I'm a bit nervous about it too. Got to make sure I have everything I need as well as plenty of beads to sell.

Still really enjoying doing the blown vessels, done a few more in the last couple of days. Also found some 104 dichro and made some beads with dichro in.

More Blown Vessels

Well I was quite pleased with what came out of the kiln this morning. More blown vessels, even managed to get two handles on them this time. First a dark blue one. The next was pale blue which I think I will try etching.

With a month to go now until the Bead Fair in Scotland I thought I would start this blog to record how things are going as I try and build up my stock for the event.

I took a day off from beadmaking on tuesday to go and visit my friends at Retro Glass in Alloa. Rachel had been good enough to order in a stock of Bullseye glass rods for me so I now have some great new colours to play with! I also bought a couple more slumping moulds, which I'm looking forward to trying out, and some other supplies. For now though the fusing has to take a back seat as I need more beads for the fair. Hopefully things went quite well today but I still have to wait for the kiln to cool down so that I can take a close look at my efforts.

I've had a hollow mandrel for some time now and recently decided to try making a blown vessel. It was so much fun I ordered a couple more mandrels so that I could try to make more than one a day. The first attempt was pretty bad (definitely not worth a photo) but the next was a bit better.

Then came a little blue pitcher . Not quite what I was trying for but quite fun anyway.